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SHAPEFILE I can't believe that there is no better standard that has been adopted yet. Do we really want a format that limits the field names, does not always come with a projection reference, uses multiple files, and has tables that are no longer editable in excel?

Not to say that in case the language you work with uses non-ASCII 7-bit characters (Galician and Spanish in my case), rendering labels and showing results of GetFeatureInfo requests so regular users do not see 'trash chars' ('Abadín' instead of 'Abad?n') is a hell, a time sink and not always possible.
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dariapraSep 29 '10 at 17:31

Unfortunately nothing matches it for speed and portability. But this is only the result of 20+ years of use. GML was a good idea, but a binary version of GML would have been better for the spatial industry. Who needs the overhead of processing 100,000+ features from a text format!
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OptimizePrimeApr 13 '11 at 16:32

7

Fascinating! The two most highly voted replies are (1) proprietary data formats are annoying and (2) shapefiles (perhaps the only non-proprietary vector format) are annoying!
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whuber♦Feb 16 '12 at 15:55

Interesting. . .If you have already PAID for ArcGIS use it, if you are branching past it or the licenses you have, then look at alternatives. I am just saying if you have a tool that does what you want why look beyond till your scope does.
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CDBrownJan 6 '11 at 1:51

Why look? Because it's important to know what else is possible... The better question is why force yourself to use something else if your solution fits your needs.
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James SchekApr 12 '11 at 0:30

3

Once an organization has invested in Arc, likely including training, then it makes financial sense to use Arc as much as possible. Sure, the alternatives may be free, but there is still an investment of time/salary to learn how to accomplish a task in other software. Not to mention the cost of integration of the alternate software, and any different data formats that might be required.
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user3461Aug 15 '11 at 14:49

19

To know ArcGIS is to know ESRI software and some GIS. To know open source GIS is to know GIS.
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valveLondonFeb 16 '12 at 5:28

When people ask me what I do, I often succumb to just saying.. "I make maps" because trying to explain GIS and the endless possibilities of it would take too long...and I'm lazy.
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GISKidAug 27 '13 at 17:04

Open Source to the rescue. You should really check out Quantum GIS, GRASS, OpenJump, et al if you are worried about costs!
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Darren CopeNov 3 '10 at 23:15

7

Or PostGIS + GeoServer delivered to end users via OpenLayers or uDIG. Configure it using Chef or Puppet and run it on EC2 for the price of a couple cups of coffee per day.
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SharpieDec 30 '10 at 1:08

5

Labor is expensive too... in some cases, many orders of magnitude more than licensing. Depending on your industry, time constraints, and geographic region, the cost of experienced employees may be unbalanced in favor of FOSS or commercial.
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James SchekApr 12 '11 at 0:33

Personal and File geodatabases are not adequate replacements for the shapefile. A better interchange format is needed. (Even just zipped up SQL statements)

A licensing or certification process wouldn't be a bad thing. Engineers have it, IT folks have it. It should be used to guarantee competence and not as much of a rubber stamp (As I seem to hear that GISP is)

GIS education programs need to emphasize fundamentals of databases and a little bit of programming and coordinate system math. Similar to 3, there needs to be better organization of GIS focused education.

RESPECT! GIS Analysts need to be respected as much as any other technical employees in an organization.

The assumption, especially in Government bodies, that the software costs money.

Too many organisations assume they need to buy expensive solutions because GIS can be complex - yet, as is often the case in software, the reference versions are almost all opensource.

If Government users spent a small percentage of their license fees supporting projects like GRASS, QGis, and postgis instead then the tools would be even more amazing, Government spending would be a lot lower, and opendata would be more consistent.

When GIS Software Support is slow and useless as a 'chocolate teapot' some vendors charge high maintenance fees and 90% of cases cannot fix or solve the problem - they come to the statement of it will be FIXED in the next available upgrade/service pack.
Which not a satisfactory conclusion when clients wants it solved yesterday.

Unfortunately this is something that is common to most industries, not just GIS. Of course, given the absurd fees, you actually expect to get something for your money irrespective of industry.
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GIS-JonathanSep 10 '12 at 13:48

I'm going to mirror someone else's post in reference to RESPECT. I'm sick of being held below engineers in the food chain. This clout of an engineering degree vs. geospatial has got to end. I'm a GISP with almost 7 years experience, with a M.S. in GIS, yet I'm compensated equal to a jr engineer with less than a year experience, with no license and only a undergraduate degree.

I have witnessed Sr. Engineers abuse spatial data now for long enough. They lack the training and experience I have when dealing with geospatial data, and processes. They don't fully understand what the "GIS is doing". They don't understand the limitations of the spatial data they are using. They believe that more detail (vertices) means the data is more accurate.

After only a week of working with a company, I was able to take a 2 week process (using +2 staff) they have done for over 10 years, into a 4 hour process using only a single staff member...

Yet, I'm just a Sr. GIS Analyst, what do I know about anything. I just push buttons for a living and make maps.

This problem is general to many other fields: A jr Engineer without experience is often less skilled than an experienced non-Engineer !
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julienNov 11 '10 at 8:37

3

I have been concerned about this for a long time: I collected some data and wrote about it 11 years ago. But to advance the conversation, we need to be aware of how engineers work. Would you be willing to get a degree in a GIS-related field and take a lengthy set of standardized exams in GIS in order just to get a job? And then, many years later, take several days of practice-based exams, graded by your peers, to get your final license?
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whuber♦Feb 16 '12 at 15:48

Products not listing what they don't support - either because they haven't implemented yet or never plan to. Too much has to be read "between the lines" of the marketing material on what is and isn't supported.

I'm seriously late to this party, but since the software side is well covered, I'll touch on the knowledge side.
What bothers me about the industry is the lack of attention to the "Geographic" portion of GIS. The university programs and classes are more and more focused simply on how to use software, in many cases, ESRI software here in the U.S.A. Once people learn the software, they are given a certificate and are considered a professional. There is little to no instruction on fundamentals of geography, like projections, data sources, data integrity, critical thinking, cartography, etc.

People don't think about the fact that the data they are working with represent places or objects in the real world. This disconnect causes them to not be able to easily certain problems, or to make leaps of reasoning that are not physically possible.

This is specifically with people who do GIS as a profession, not specialists in other fields who have begun to use GIS as part of their jobs. Specialists are generally more aware of the source and limitations of their data, and thus do not make some of these errors.

For me it is the recreation of existing functionality, where I look there seem to be a lot of people spending an inordinate amount of time, and business risk to fulfill already cluttered niches. An over simplified example is where people build a new geoprocessing tool to do a series of functions which the core GIS application they are using already does. So writing code rather than scripting or using the existing functionality.

We spend so much time on this, think of the things we could be doing if we used that time more efficiently. Scientist can then do Science, Engineers can design, GIS Professionals can make sure that these functions work.

The lack of layout / composition possibilities. GIS packages permits spatial data analysis, but not their beautiful presentation on a page.
Also the thematic cartography tools were not adapted or scientifically correct (think about area proportional symbols), but that's improving.

In comparison to 9.x and 10.0, many things just simply worked in AV 3.x. In light of that, I'm not sure I can fault anyone for sticking with all these years. ;-)
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Roger D.Nov 7 '10 at 12:44

1

It is interesting to follow the comment thread at gis.stackexchange.com/a/20168 where (somewhat accidentally) performance of AV 3 and AV 10 is directly compared. You can also compare the complexity of the scripts used to generate the solutions.
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whuber♦Feb 16 '12 at 15:51

One of my biggest gripes with the Spatial Software vendors, is the lack of coherence in GUI and its lack of intuition. I've been working with Spatial Software for some time (~10 years) and even though I swap between 3 (ESRI, MapInfo, ERDAS) packages regularly, I still find myself searching help menus for relatively simple tasks. I feel standardizing the names of commonly performed functions and procedures that these software vendors can utilize will make our jobs easier. Ever used Microsoft Word one day and OpenOffice Writer the next? Apart from some little changes in experience, you're still able to navigate the software with minimal impact to productivity.

The Spatial Software Industry need to follow this model. Distinguishing yourself by using differing and confusing titles for common tasks for the sake of "being different" is counter productive and extremely annoying

Also the fanaticism of a single software package. Its software, not an ideology! Don't let being a fanboy stop you from building your skill set and learning.

People thinking you cannot perform GIS related activities outside of a propriatary GIS e.g. use maths, to perform calculations, rather than use a bit of software, with it's overheads.

I always have a library of code to implement in projects which avoid GIS completely, and are much quicker as a result. All too often, you will have PM's or Analysts who baulk at this, and make the end application less effecient as a result.

Sometimes, its best to use a computer for what it is good at, and thats number crunching. All too often, there's a simpler solution in Maths (a cornerstone of gis imo) that should be implemented instead of a call to an ARCGIS/ARCPY (there are of course others).

Total lack of standardization and recognition of education and experience. Pay is often random--I'm talking anywhere from $10/hr to $150,000/year depending on security clearance level. I've seen positions in one organization as "GIS Analyst" with lower pay than "GIS Technician" in a similar firm. They do have the GISP; however, that is haphazardly run by somebody in downstate Illinois with a mandate to "contribute" to the community. Many private sector jobs don't want you to participate outside of work and/or they have no resources or are apathetic to your needs. Let's not even mention the fact that many of us are working in GIS Departments in small towns in random sectors of the country and world. At least in IT and Engineering you have standardized tests that enable you to juxtapose yourself to other candidates.

For-profit companies and industries that rely on free sources and do not contribute to the sites that serve up the data. Talk about short sighted.
In the same vain private companies and for profit people that complain about free stuff and do not contribute.
So much of the GIS profit generated relies on the goodwill of a few (natural earth for example) people yet for profit employees complain, do not contribute labor or funds, and then are upset if a resource they make a profit off goes away.

For profit industry in GIS sits on top of the free labor of far too many. Contribute!